Europe's top Triassic hunter
It was the largest meat-eating dinosaur known from Triassic Europe.
The first dinosaurs · Theropods
Liliensternus
Named after Hugo Rühle von Lilienstern · LIL-ee-en-STER-nus
A long, slender hunter with a crested snout, a long neck and a long tail.
- Size
- About 5m long; 130kg
- Lived
- About 210 million years ago
- Found in
- Germany
Lopes after you. Move your pointer and see.
To scale
How big was it?
The bars are drawn to the same scale. On these pages the animals are sized in proportion to each other as far as a screen allows: the giants are shrunk a little and the smallest are enlarged, so that you can see them all.
Good to know
Six things about the liliensternus
Named after a collector
It honours a German doctor and fossil collector who kept a dinosaur museum in his castle.
A crest on its snout
It probably had a low crest along the top of its snout.
It hunted Plateosaurus
It lived alongside Plateosaurus and may have preyed on young ones.
Lightly built
For its length it was slim, with a narrow body and long legs.
A step towards the giants
It sits between small early hunters like Coelophysis and the bigger ones that came later.
The real thing
Photos of the liliensternus
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
What it ate
Plant-eating dinosaurs and other reptiles.
How we know
It is known from two partial skeletons found together in Germany.
Keep going
More from The first dinosaurs
‹ ThecodontosaurusBack to The first dinosaursA to ZCoelophysis ›